Advice on College Courses(motorsport related)

One thing I will say about any motorsport course having done Motorsport Engineering, get ready for a hell of a lot of theory/ class room time and very little actual hands on experience

If you use your head you can find a course where its laid out a bit more evenly

 

have a good look here. my mate is doing the motorsport level 3.
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This^
I did a 2 years of it,was supose to be 50/50 theory/practical, was closer to 70/30.
Having said that the course at oxford and cherwell valley college is good.
That was the best option i found and i did move to do the course as well (not quite as far as you but still )
Motorsport | OCVC

 

You sound to be in exactly the same situation as me although i am a bit further along in the process.

I am living in Ireland to and have served my time and am now a qualified mechanic and have realised what a shit existance working in a main dealers is so I applied to ucas in January to study motorsport engineering as a mature student at brooklands college and have now been accepted and I am starting in September.

I picked brooklands as it seems to be much more practical based than other motorsport engineering courses.

I would suggest you go for it! A day dosent go passed that I don't wish that I had done this straight after leaving school and skipped all the apprentiship rubbish.

 

Thats what im doing atm, is good but dont expect to be thrown in at the deep end, you've got to work your way to it, level one is all the basics with a spinkle of motorsport

 

looks like ill see you there in september!

op-
i did a BTEC motorsport engineering at wiltshire college for 2 years when i was 16 instead of doing an advanced apprenticeship. personally i didnt like it one bit, in fact i thought it was the most infuriating waste of time ever.
the problem with these new BTEC courses is they rarely have good enough staff/enough money/ facilities to actually offer what they say when you go there to have a look. they entice you with all these promises and basicly dont deliver on any of them.
however thats just one course in one place so dont let it put you off completely.
one thing i will say is that because edexcell (or whoever the examining body is) dont have a fucking clue about motorsport, they let the lecturers write the exams and assignments, leaving the door wide open for them to fuck it up and write stuff which is hard to answer properly. i experianced this first hand and i know of other at different places who dsay the same.

best thing to do (which i wish so much i had done) is go to a good college with good rep and do GENERAL engineering. youll find it opens a lot more doors and alows you to be much more flexable about what you do in the future.

 

I'm doing aerospace eng, and the stuff is also good for motorsport (think F1, or any mechanical work. Those monkeys working on the rally cars, for example, are working 50x less precise than those in aerospace, if not more ) Look at stuff you can relate to motorsport, and work on that.

(Doing BTEC ND level 3 with an NVQ level 2)

 

Ill get back to you with the actual course title etc but my friend studied at the Motorsport college in Bicester, Oxford and it seems VERY good. He is now on verge of spannering for F1.

 

i started working in aerospace about 5 1/2 yrs ago , and trust me the guys workin in f1 ,rally ect. are working to just as presise standards , they just dont have all the certification and legislation to put up with
it is a good misconception that works in you favour as anything aircraft or aerospace on you C.V does look very good if you are trying to get into motorsport

 

i started the motorsport engineering course in swansea met uni but dropped out after 7 months.

the way the course was set out was diabolical. i was traveling 60 mile round trip from home to coll but the classes were laid out so that i did 1 hour 9am till 10am then 2 hours 2:30 till 4:30. was like this most days.

got fed up.

 

Studying Mechanical engineering at the moment(-5years of my life), and thou it opens you up to all facets of engineering, the boredom is incredible, get ready to do 80% theory, and boring lectures. Think I might go off and do some motorsports Eng after I am done next year.

 

agreed, there is a lot of theory, it starts of very slow but then picks up very quickly. there are guys i know which had to stay behind a extra year to finish up work

 

I had the same issue as this but this comes down to the runnig of the college or Uni which you are at. Where i studied they were so bad, tutors turning up hours late, some times not even having them turn up. lectures which were no use and scheduled and never happened.

The year after i left the college was shut down!

 

REally, down to 1 thou? Better than I thought (Though I remember seeing BTCC and NASCAR wrenches just duct taping bonnets down xD)

 

I hate to break this to all the guys wanting to work in engineering and being surprised its nearly all theory, thats because it is.

Engineering degree's are all about theory and maths. Thats why there isnt a degree in spannering, because there isnt really any academic brains involved in being a general mechanic. They dont need to know why stuff works, just how in general and how it comes apart and goes back together. Now, being an engine/chassis/car builder at high level is very different. Learning the spannering part is easy, learning the theory behind it is fucking hard and why you need a degree. To prove to an employer you knowledgeable. But these jobs are few and far between to really, most uni people go into design or broader engineering jobs because most motorsport spannering jobs are working on shit cars, for shit money and for rich twats.

But, if you do one of the motorsport degree's you wont want to be working on cars anymore. You'll want to be a designer/development engineer etc. More fun, better projects and more cash.

 

i was looking at doing a uni course in motorsport, but i thought to myself that its such a specialist job market that there wouldnt be many option for me after that unless i had someone on the inside or i had a lucky break, so for me i decided to hit the IT route and did computer systems engineering, programming and engineers math at greenwich uni, and now i have a pucker job. Anyways getting to the point, on the other hand a couple of my mates have made it into mainstream racing and also are under some form of scheme with top notch manufacturers, but on the other hand i know of a fair few that are still working in waitrose becuase there wasnt a lucky break for them.

Jamie Ackers, did a motorsport course and went onto race in the Renault cup and then onto a scheme with Seat - (he did have a good background in karting though)




Micheal Ivring - no motorsport backgorund, just crazy street motors (cossie'd ford angliars and uno turbos) went oxford brookes, now competes in formula reno's (i think thats the series off the top of my head) and takes part in the ginetta cup




when i looked into a motorsport course i found Kingston and Oxford were the best courses going at the time, but im sure alot more have opened up now,

best bet is to go to Autosport Show at the NEC, they have loads of UNI's there offering courses, and now specialist courses in Aerodynamics, engineering etc.

 

This. End.

Seriously though if you want to do well go to Brookes.

Not that it's a better Uni than anywhere else, frankly current students i've interacted with from Brookes generally strike me as lacking common sense massively, and don't appear that clued up on the theory, HOWEVER, Brookes has the best contacts in the business.

Brookes have monopolies on certain places taking their students for placements, and that's worth more that your degree really.

Brunel and Imperial are excellent too.